Free and Open Source Software

If it’s free, it’s not competing.

If you want to make something, go ahead and build it.

Artists don’t compete with other artists

Nah OP, that's just the nature of the ecosystem. We have more terminal emulators and text editors than we know what to do with and people continue making more. That being said, if your project idea is extremely similar to an existing project, you should check to see if the devs of that project would be interested in your ideas since you could collaborate with them if they are.

FOSS shit is built to be reproduced. if you wanted to fork somebody's project and build your own thing on top of it, that's in the spirit of open source. if they didn't want it to happen, they wouldn't use a FOSS license. if you can do that, then building your own thing that does similar stuff is certainly not a problem. FOSS isn't competitive, its collaborative. everybody who contributes is doing a good thing, even if that's by building more options for people.

Immoral? No, not at all. A waste of resources? Maybe. Depends. Maybe you are better off contributing to the other project, maybe not.

There's nothing wrong with having multiple projects that do the same thing, but the project might grow faster if you work together on one app.

There are already 5 or so Android apps for Lemmy, at least 2 iPhone apps and 2 Linux apps on Flathub. Go ahead.

If the available software doesn't work as you want it to and you have the skill and time to make something you like go ahead. Often enough in the open source world devs of "competing" programs actually help each other.

So in the end you will just make the world a better place with your contribution.

I'm reminded of a time I found myself using an open source tool on github and finding it severely out of date on sources of information it was using to operate. I made a fork, spent a few hours updating, committed that code and put in a pull request with the original developer so they could merge it back into their original. 5 Years later, no response. 🤣

People abandon projects for various reasons or only work with the scarce free time they have. You may find someone interested in a healthy competition, but it might be more likely they back off when they see someone pick up the torch and do what they no longer can.

Lemmy and Kbin both fill the same niche. They can coexist peacefully. There is nothing wrong with trying it your own way. One of the great things about reddit was the app ecosystem that allowed all users to pick their favorite. My favorite was BaconReader, which wasn't particularly popular, but really worked for me. I'm glad that the developers of BaconReader didn't decide the market was already too crowded.

I would recommend anyone making a Lemmy app, especially open source apps, document the stuff that was hard for them in making the app so others can learn and not have to fight the same battle.

No, it's not immoral. It's preferable that people join their efforts into few projects (that's how more impactful tools are created most of the time), but there is nothing wrong with you starting your own project and bringing your own vision to life.

Note also that not all free software projects want contribution from outside.

Are you planning on making a GTK4 Lemmy frontend? That would be awesome!

Maybe this book would be of interest to you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar . It is a bit dated, but nevertheless great read about OpenSource movement.

Nah it’s totally within the spirit of FOSS to outright copy someone else’s project and modify it let alone write greenfield stuff that competes with it, just because we’re not in a traditional corporate/proprietary IP sort of environment here doesn’t mean there can’t be competition; in fact competition in FOSS is good as it drives innovation and improvement.

"Is it wring to improve things, add features, or provide alternatives?"

In a word: no.

No, never. Diversity is the strength of open source software. Someone coming along and doing things differently to you is actually really helpful. Just remember that if you are both open sourced you can both see how each other solved a complex problem, fixed a bad bug, or made a performance gain. You won't be able to directly import their code but the back and forth is helpful for both of you.

That said, helping with an established project is generally a better idea than making a new one from scratch unless you have a clear reason to be different. Many hands make light work and if you can work with someone you may make something better together than you would on your own. Never let that stop you though, go have fun, make a cool thing, and if it turns out you would rather work more in a team you can bring what you learned from building your thing to another project later.

Believe it or not, forking is something open-source devs really appreciate.

imo yeah it's one-upping by technicality, but it isn't wrong. so long as you're not specifically bullying or bothering the original project/author, it's ok to want to make something yourself. if your new project ends up having more users, it sucks for them but oh well - it's not like you're intentionally shoved them out of the space, & others certainly won't see it that way either. even in the case that the other project is developed slowly because the dev doesn't have a lot of time, well, that's not really your fault either, nor is it a reason to sit there & not make anything else.

also remember that open source is a collective, not a competition - just because two projects do the same thing doesn't mean that one has to win & the other has to be pushed out. even if two projects do the same thing, their goals & the method they use to achieve it can be different enough that they still both serve a purpose & are important to have around. using the example in your post, the other gtk lemmy frontend could be geared towards power users & take on more of an advanced style with a bunch of plugins, extensions, etc. where you could go the opposite & simplify/optimize for touch friendliness. i've seen a projects before that chose to acknowledge that they do the same thing but have different goals & help each other out by committing to the other's project & giving each other shout outs so it's definitely possible to coexist

Lmao my dude. It's perfectly moral to take a FOSS project, fork it, and release your own version based on their code. As we can see from the recent RHEL drama, it's also perfectly fine (from the perspective of the community) to clone someone's project, rebrand it, and release it as your own.

Why do you think it would be immoral to write an app from scratch that does someting similar to an existing one, while having better foundations and running orders of magnitude faster? That's called healthy competition...

The people I've worked with on FOSS projects don't do it to be famous or capture market share. They do it because it scratches an itch they had; it's something they needed and decided to give back.

Large projects by huge megacorps have incorporated the OSS code I worked on into their own projects. Did it bother me? Sure, a little. Mostly because people just assume that the ideas and work came from the benevolence of a big tech company rather than someone who just enjoys seeing others problems solved.

You do you. If it makes you feel good to write something: go for it. If it gets popular? Cool. If it doesn't? That's okay too, you still have something that works well for you.

It's your time, effort and skill. Do whatever you please.

Sounds like you have a great opportunity to collaborate on technical details, etc.. but still have separate projects. More power to you!

Now if you got more specific and the other author happened to have beat you in a student council election then I'd say it's probably time to forgive and forget.

If you think the original codebase is salvageable and you have the skills to help out I think it is nice to make contributions to it.

However there are lots of reasons why someone might start their own project even when one exists. Learning experience, compatible existing skills, personality, philosophies, goals, target audience/community, workflows...

I think you are worrying too much. There are a bazillion tools to accomplish tasks especially in FLOSS. FLOSS embraces the fork. The rewrite in another language (rust has a bunch of these). New iterations on previous work (eg ag "The Silver Searcher. Like ack, but faster" off the top of my head). And many alternative tools for any possible use of a computer. Have you ever looked at a list of window managers or text editors or todo lists? Endless. Some FLOSS projects even list alternative applications in their documentation.

You could as a courtesy reach out to the dev of the existing project and introduce yourself and say some nice things like how they inspired you. But I do not know if this is really the done thing. (Not a programmer here.) It might come off just as self-promotion. Maybe someone else can give an opinion on that.

Just be sure not to shit talk the other developer or their work. Just talk about what you are doing.

To go with your example of lemmy, I'd point out that there are numerous mobile clients in active development. Are all but 1 on each platform "immoral"? Is the kbin dev immoral for producing an alternative to lemmy?

If there is only one existing tool to get the job done, and the person who develops it is really just way too busy to maintain it, or it is for any reason not a priority in their life any more, they might even be relieved to learn someone else is making an effort to fill the gap. It might lift feelings of guilt for not doing more to keep up their work.

I think there is not GTK frontend, so tell them, and they can point to your project when someone asks for the GTK client

Nothing immoral about it, more options is a good thing.

You could try to collaborate with the other project instead of seeing it as competition. I'm sure you must have seen some of the same problems as you are doing similar things, albeit in different languages.

No, it's not wrong. Think of all the users who would love your app. You would be benefiting many people by developing the app versus benefiting only one person (the developer) if you chose not to. And honestly I don't think the other developer would be so struck with grief because someone else was working on a similar project. The internet is large enough for more than one app and one developer.